New board takes charge at GF Group

Italian fresh produce company GF Group has appointed a new board of directors, including a new chief executive and chief financial officer, as it bids to put behind it the financial difficulties and corporate challenges it has experienced over the past couple of years.

Taking the helm in place of former boss Raffaella Orsero, who had previously taken over the running of GF Group from her brother Antonio, is Giorgio Bertolina, a veteran business leader with a background in telecommunications.

Most recently, Bertolina was a senior director at Alvarez & Marsal, an international consultancy that specialises in troubleshooting and turning around struggling and failed companies – notably Lehman Brothers and Arthur Andersen.

Alongside new CFO Matteo Colombini, also a specialist in debt restructuring, corporate turnaround and business strategy, Bertolina is expected to continue recent efforts to refocus GF Group’s strategy on its core areas – production, shipping, imports and distribution – while divesting non-core parts of the business for an estimated €78m.

“I feel honoured to have been selected as CEO of a company that is an international leader in its industry,” commented Bertolina. “The debt restructuring agreement with lenders has set the scene for the full recovery of the group. The identified path and the current results for the previous year, together with the preliminary figures for 2015, allow me to express confidence in the feasibility of the business plan targets.”

Having secured a number of new financing arrangements earlier this year in order to restructure the company’s debts and place it back on a path to growth, there are indeed signs that the recalibration of GF Group’s business strategy is working. With an approved share capital increase of €18m already approved by 75 per cent of shareholders, new figures published by the group for 2014 show sales of €652m, with like-for-like sales of €750m and an operating profit of €22m.

“Also, the preliminary figures for the first few months of the current year confirm the positive trend, in particular within the traditional activities of shipping, import and distribution in Italy (Cosiarma, Simba and Fruttital),” the company said in a statement.